Qualia Contemporary Art makes its Art Central Hong Kong debut at Booth A1 with a duo presentation of new paintings by Lyu Peng and Xu Hongming. This exhibition traces the divergent trajectories of contemporary Chinese painting, placing Lyu’s theatrical figuration in direct conversation with Xu’s luminous, systems-based abstraction. While the artists share a material vocabulary—ink, mineral pigment, silk, and xuan paper—they arrive at opposing methodologies of investigating Chinese tradition. Lyu balances narrative density and the staged illumination of symbolic figures, whereas Xu focuses on the diffusion of light within atmospheric fields. Together, they articulate diverging approaches in contemporary Chinese painting: one oriented toward a maximalist documentation of the present, and the other toward a materialist deconstruction of the image.
Lyu Peng’s practice is rooted in his background in calligraphy and seal carving, which informs a systematic commitment to the technical properties of Chinese painting and a sustained experimentation with mediums. Since the mid-1990s, Lyu has pioneered the use of Yunlong Xuan, a paper containing raw, untouched fibers that allow for an exceptional depth of color and texture. By actively modifying the substrate to control absorbency and surface behavior, Lyu facilitates a material repertoire that includes oil and acrylic alongside traditional mineral pigments. Conceptually, Lyu collapses the boundaries between tradition and modernity through surreal figuration. He places intellectual avatars—often depicted in states of complacent perplexity with sunglasses and faces buried in texts—into hybrid environments where classical landscapes intersect with operatic props and markers of mass culture. His use of light is direct and symbolic, illuminating these figures as they navigate increasingly saturated and artificial worlds.
In contrast, Xu Hongming proposes a deliberate evacuation of figuration to re-activate the internal logic of shanshui without adhering to a codified literati grammar. In his long-running series, Not Clouds, Not Fog, Not Qi, Xu mixes mineral powders and binders to produce atmospheric fields. Rather than applying pigment through traditional brushwork, he disperses, sifts, or "rains" material onto silk or canvas supports. This methodology creates a tension between chance and calibration, where the artist’s breath and bodily motion perturb the fall of pigment to create surfaces that appear both unfixed and highly controlled. Xu’s work shifts the focus from the material subject to the behavior of light itself, indirectly illuminating invisible mediums and atmospheric clouds that constitute the "formless." This approach treats the image as an epistemic and perceptual subject rather than a focused narrative stage.
Seen together, the artists propose two complementary ways of working within contemporary uncertainty. Lyu Peng’s maximalist approach offers a cultural archive of the modern condition, while Xu Hongming’s abstraction seeks the origins of visual experience through material intelligence. Placing Lyu’s social iconography alongside Xu’s atmospheric deconstruction highlights how the inherited logic of shanshui is recalibrated to produce specific modes of focus—one through the criticality of mythic symbolism, the other through the contemplation of elemental space. The exhibition invites a movement between staged narrative and open atmosphere, recognizing the emotional resonance concurrent to both macroscopic and molecular worlds.